Wesley had reached his home—City Road—the proper place from which to be translated to his heavenly mansion. He is waiting for the chariot. His friends are deeply anxious. Joseph Bradford sends the following dispatch to the preachers:

"Dear brethren, Mr. Wesley is very ill. Pray! Pray! Pray!"

Looking over the whole of an extended life of unparalleled labor and suffering, he exclaims:

The day following he was heard to say, "There is no way into the holiest but by the blood of Jesus."

He frequently, with full heart, sang Watts's rapturous hymn, beginning:

The tide of life is rapidly ebbing, but light from the realms above reveals to his enraptured soul the glories of his eternal home. Collecting all his remaining strength, he joyfully exclaims, "The best of all is, God is with us."

The chamber where the good man gathered up his feet in death seemed radiant with the divine glory. A few of his preachers and intimate friends were there—Bradford, long his traveling companion; Dr. Whitehead, afterward his biographer; Rogers and his devoted wife, Hester Ann, who ministered to him in his last hours; the daughter of Charles Wesley; Thomas Rankin; George Whitefield, his book steward; and a few others. They knelt around the couch of the dying saint. Bradford prayed. Then with a low but almost angelic whisper he said, "Farewell." It was his last. And at the moment Bradford was saying, in a petition which must have reached the throne of God, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and this heir of glory shall come in." While they thus lingered "the weary wheels of life" stood still, and the unparalleled career of John Wesley was ended at 10 a. m., March 2, 1791.

Hester Ann Rogers, who was present, says: "And while he could hardly be said to be an inhabitant of earth, being now speechless, and his eyes fixed, victory and glory were written on his countenance, and quivered, as it were, on his dying lips. No language can paint what appeared in that face! The more we gazed upon it the more we saw heaven unspeakable."

Thus lived and died the founder of the Methodist denomination.

It was remembered that when the mother of Wesley was dying she said, "Children, as soon as I am dead sing a song of praise." So, as Wesley himself ceased to breathe, his friends, standing about his lifeless form, sang:

He had requested in his will, and, in the name of God, most solemnly adjured his executors scrupulously to observe it, that six poor men should carry his body to the grave, and should receive one pound each for the same. He requested that there should be no display, no hearse, no coach, no escutcheon, no pomp, except the tears of those who loved him and were following him to Abraham's bosom. All these directions were strictly observed.

He was buried in the cemetery of the City Road Chapel.

Mr. Wesley's death attracted public notice beyond any former example not only in London, but throughout the United Kingdom. Thousands of his people, with the traveling preachers, went into mourning for him. The pulpits of the Methodists and of many other denominations were draped in black, and hundreds of sermons were preached on the subject of his death.

His indefatigable zeal had long been witnessed by all classes; but his motives had been variously estimated. Some attributed it to love of popularity, others to ambition, and others to love of wealth; but it now appeared that he was actuated by a pure regard for the immortal interests of mankind. Many ministers, both of the Establishment and among Dissenters, spoke with great respect of his long, laborious, devoted, and useful life, and earnestly exhorted their hearers to follow him as he followed Christ.

"He was a man," says Lord Macaulay, "whose eloquence and logical acuteness might have rendered him eminent in literature; whose genius for government was not inferior to that of Richelieu; and who devoted all his powers, in defiance of obloquy and derision, to what he sincerely considered the highest good of his species."

The ardor of his spirit was never dampened by difficulties nor subdued by age. The world ascribed this to enthusiasm, but he ascribed it to the grace of God. Whatever it was, it has commanded the respect of the present generation. He who was expelled from all the churches as a madman and a fanatic is now deemed worthy of a most eligible niche in England's grandest cathedral.

Dr. Watts's admirable elegy on Thomas Gouge has been applied to the death of Wesley:

On the monument in Westminster Abbey is the simple inscription:

This is engraved upon the tablet:

The first two were the utterances of John, and the last of Charles, Wesley.

The following poem was written by the "Bard of Sheffield," Hon. James Montgomery, on the first centennial of Wesleyan Methodism, 1836. It is a beautiful tribute: